Development time vs. runtime performance (was: Fibonacci series recursion error)

[Teemu Likonen]

* 2011-05-08T12:59:02Z * Steven D'Aprano wrote:

> On Sun, 08 May 2011 01:44:13 -0400, Robert Brown wrote:
>> I don't understand why you place Lisp and Forth in the same category
>> as Pascal, C, and Java. Lisp and Forth generally have highly
>> interactive development environments, while the other languages
>> generally require an edit, compile, run it again debugging cycle.
>
> Good point. Perhaps I need to rethink where Lisp and Forth sit in the
> development vs runtime trade-off continuum.
>
>> Python requires me to rewrite the slow bits of my program in C to get
>> good performance.
>
> Python doesn't require you to re-write anything in C. If you want to
> make a different trade-off (faster runtime, slower development time)
> then you use a language that has made the appropriate trade-off.

I believe that Robert Brown wanted to imply that Common Lisp is quite
optimal on both sides. It supports dynamic interactive development and
yet it has implementations with very efficient compilers. The trade-off
is not necessarily between the two.

But of course "development time" is a nicely vague concept. Depending on
the argument it can include just the features of language and
implementation. Other times it could include all the available resources
such as documentation, library archives and community mailing lists. All
these can reduce development time.